semi thank you for joining us is our. tomorrow is christmas eve. merry christmas to all those who celebrate. i have two new christmas presents for you. i will tell you about that later on in this hour, something i will give you as a christmas present on christmas

day. we will get to that later on in this hour. the other one is just that this , it is a true story that i think of as a christmas present. at least, i think it can be something helpful for understanding today's news, it arrives at add auspicious time. this is a story about this matter, his name is joseph e davies. he was born in wisconsin to immigrant parents, he got involved in democratic party politics, he became the democratic party chairman in the state of wisconsin and he then moved to washington, had some government jobs, he ended up getting very, very rich as a corporate lawyer, and then in the 1930s, two things happened in his life. first, he became a diplomat, he became a u.s. ambassador, he was ambassador to belgium and ambassador to

luxembourg and most famously he was also america's ambassador to russia, to the soviet union. he was very controversial in that role because he was seen as a real suck up, he was seen as a real apologist for the stalin dictatorship in russia. but if you want to know what he was really really famous for more than that, it was the other big thing that happened in his life around the same time that he started this high profile diplomatic career. the other thing that happened right around then is he got married to the richest woman in america. this was a very high profile affair. he got married before he became ambassador to russia. she was his wife and went with him to moscow while he was the ambassador in russia, she shipped over to moscow from the united states, 25 refrigerators and 2000 pints of frozen cream.

not to distribute in russia, all for her, all for the ambassadors residents. it was a high-profile thing. it was a second marriage for him, third marriage for her, they did not have any kids together, but they did stay married for a long time but they were married for 20 years, a lot of that was in the public eye. one of the lasting marks of this famous marriage is this. this coat of arms. i mentioned, joseph davies was the son of immigrants, he was the son of welsh immigrants, his parents were from wales. while he was in the middle of his high-profile diplomatic career in the 1930s, he arranged that the uk would issue his family this coat of arms. this was the official davies family crest, their

official coat of arms from his ancestral family, the davies family. while he was married to the richest woman in the country, the couple had his family crest , his family coat of arms, installed at her house, like carved into the fireplace and mounted on the wall. her house, her name was marjorie meriwether post, her house was her pride and joy, it was a mansion she had built in south florida that was called mar-a-lago. her house was famously later sold in the 1980s at bargain basement price to a man named donald trump, whereupon, trump took the coat of arms that was up on the wall at the house he just bought,

the coat of arms that was carved into the fireplace and up on the wall at mar-a-lago, he took the coat of arms, he took the joseph e davies family coat of arms and he started using it as if it was his own. this is the coat of arms for the joseph davies family, which was up on the wall at mar-a- lago when donald trump bought mar-a-lago in the 80s. this is the coat of arms that trump uses today as if it is his own. if you go to the webpage or advertising materials for any of trump's properties, he uses this everywhere. he uses this coat of arms, not only in his advertisements and his which he found on the wall, he uses it for his golf clubs and all of his other properties. here is your christmas present, here goes. see if you can see the difference between these two

coat of arms, the coat of arms that trump uses on all of his stuff now, and the original one that he found on the wall at mar-a-lago when he bought the house. see if you can spot the difference. we will put them both on the screen at the same time. on the left is the coat of arms that trump trademarked. on the right, that is where he got it from, that is the original. you see the one on the left, the trump one, a little scroll on the bottom says trump, like it is the trump family crest. on the right side of your screen you can see what word was there originally, the word that trump took off the coat of arms in order to put his own name on it. the word there is integra toss, integrity. he literally removed the word integrity and put himself there

instead, on somebody else's real family coat of arms that he stole and appropriated for his own purposes. >> when joseph davies grandson died a few years ago during the first trump term, his obituary in the "new york times" explained that although the family from whom trump took the crest was not at all happy about trump claiming as if it was his own, mr. davies grandson advise the rest of the family to quote, not bother suing mr. trump quote, because you will be in court for years and years and years. so they let it go. president-elect donald trump took that other families coat of arms, took their family crest and to this day pretends like it is his own, but he had to remove the word integrity in order to do that. so merry christmas.

the news gods got you a metaphor. it may be has not been a good idea to try to run this presidential transition from mar-a-lago with bad juju of that family crest stolen from some other family looming over the proceedings minus its integrity. there was that the nfl owner with a felony conviction and a famous bribery case involving a riverboat casino license in louisiana, trump gave the nfl owner a pardon at his first term and president, in addition to the second term he decided to give that nfl owner son-in- law a job in the new administration, decided to give that nfl owner son-in-law the job of writing the dea, running the drug enforcement agency. why not? he knows his father-in- law, the felon, that he gave

the part into. trump award at this dea choice, apparently without googling the son-in-law. the announcement that the son- in-law would get the dea job that was made by trump on a saturday by the following tuesday, the guy announced he was pulling himself out of consideration whereupon trump announced that the guy did not pull himself out, i pulled him out. trump had only named this guide to the job three days earlier. i pulled him out. why did you name him three days ago? it was trump's announcement of his white house counsel, top lawyer in the white house who was soon unannounced as white house counsel amid news from mar-a-lago that the guy who had pressed for that particular white house counsel had reportedly been demanding cash bribes if you wanted to put your name in contention for top job in terms white house. the da announcement, not dea

announcement. white house counsel announcement, not white house counsel announcement. amid a lot of chest pounding on how they were not going to let anybody else like the fbi do background checks or vetting of their nominees and they could handle the vetting themselves and they did not need anyone meddling in it. the trump team themselves ended up proclaiming themselves blindsided by all of the skeletons in the closet that they did not know about, from disastrous pics like the fox news we can host they picked to be defense secretary. shockingly, when you do not that someone it turns out the things that you are not vetting might turn up about them. after picking a serving u.s. senator from florida for the secretary of state job, trump let it be known that he was personally lobbying lord as governor to install his sons wife in the newly vacated senate seat from florida. that in itself is a humiliating

nepotistic farce, resident demands senate seat be given to his daughter-in-law. it is something else when the president commits to the humiliating farce and then it does not work. daughter-in-law, laura trump now publicly removing herself from consideration after reports from florida that after all of that, after that humiliating nepotistic farce she was not going to get the tap after all. and of course trump's choice of this man to be attorney general , attorney general of the united states. quote, in sum, the committee found substantial evidence of the following, from at least 2017 to 2020 representative gates regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity with him. in 2017 representative gaetz engaged with sexual activity with a 17-year-old girl. during the period 2017 to 2019

representative gaetz used illegal drugs including cocaine and ecstasy on multiple occasions. representative gaetz accepted gifts including confrontation and lodging in a trip to the bahamas in excessive amounts. in 2018 representative gaetz arranged for his chief of staff to assist a woman with whom he engaged in sexual activity in obtaining a passport haseley indicating to the u.s. department of state that she was a constituent. representative gaetz willingly and knowingly sought to impede the obstruction of the committees conduct and representative gaetz has acted in a manner that reflects this credibly on the house of representatives. based on the above the committee concludes that there was substantial evidence that representative gaetz violated house rules and state and federal laws, and other standards of conduct prohibiting prostitution, statutory , illicit drug use , acceptance of impermissible gifts, the permission provision of special favors and privileges and good measure, obstruction of congress.

violated house rules and state and federal laws prohibiting prostitution, illicit drug use, statutory . the house ethics report on republican congressman matt gaetz that was released today. which, immediately raised questions like, given all the evidence that the ethics investigation turned out, how did he avoid getting criminally indicted? also, given roughly 330 million people to choose from in this country, what does it say about a person's judgment if they surveyed the 330 million people of this country and decide this guy is the best one, this is the best pic in the country to be attorney general of the united states. state and federal laws by hitting prostitution, illicit drug use and statutory . now,

while congressman gaetz denies all wrongdoing, i think it is beyond inarguable that he has sort of a special place in the trump transition and will for all history. donald trump's transition to his second term in office has been a series of humiliations and failures, none worse then choosing this particular person to be attorney general. a prospect that lasted eight days and then collapsed. during that time, the president- elect himself reportedly called u.s. senators and lobbied them to approve this choice, vouching for the guy, telling senators they needed to support him, putting his own political capital into the game. the vice president-elect personally, physically brought this guy in and out of senators offices putting his own credibility and his own political capital on the line to vouch for this guy and get

him approved. multiple republican senators went on the record indicating yes, absolutely, i will vote for this guy for attorney general, why not? that is my best judgment. hi lindsay glam, hello bill hagerty, aren't you glad you took the humiliating reputational hit to vouch for matt gaetz given that days later he dropped out and now we have the ethics committee accusing him, officially, of statutory and prostitution and lots and lots of drug use , including and allegedly setting up a fake email address in the congressional office that he specifically used to score pot, was it worth it for you? do you want to do it again? don't forget all the congressional republicans who went on the record and have voted to make sure that this information would be kept secret so matt gaetz can have a chance

of becoming attorney general of the united states without the public ever finding out the evidence that congress collected about, again, statutory , prostitution, drug use, et cetera. that includes the very, very, very pious, biblically guided speaker of the house who went out in public and strenuously argued that the american public should not be allowed to know the evidence that the house had collected about matt gaetz. the american public should not be allowed to see that evidence so matt gaetz can be attorney general, without anybody knowing about what we now know as the ethics committee conclusions that there is substantial evidence that matt gaetz broke all of these laws including the ones about grown men not having sex with children. the deeply pious house speaker is this that information must be kept secret from the american people so that matt gaetz can be attorney general of the united states.

house speaker mike johnson, how do you feel about putting your reputation in this particular dumpster? would you do it again? because you will be asked to do it again they had how do you feel about being asked to put your reputation in this particular dumpster given that the gaetz nomination was withdrawn days later? you did it for nothing. the trump transition has been a 20 car pileup of errors and humiliations that reflect poorly on trump as the decision- maker at the top. but also inflict the political harm and humiliation on lots of other republicans who his errors have messed with him including his own vice presidents and all of the senators and republican members of the house who go to bat for matt gaetz with all this after an election in which democrats gained a couple of seats and republicans lost

ground in the house which means the republican margin for getting anything pass in the house is smaller than at any time in the past century. and now, on top of all of that is what we expect to be his last act presumably before christmas, we just had transition trump run the republican controlled house right up to the precipice of another government shutdown. the closest we have been to a government shutdown said the last time trump was president. trump has made a lot of errors and under forced humiliating goals in this transition. i think the media should cover it more that way. the idea that this is a normal transition and that it has not been gaffe after gaffe and own goal after own goal and reputational harm after reputational harm, trump not only taking his own political capital and sites wiping every other powerful republican in washington while he's doing it as he mishandled the nominations, it has been a terrible shambolic transition.

on top of everything else that he has done with his nominations and the way he has mishandled, the brush with a government shutdown this weekend made trump look not just error-prone and easily confused, but also week. the whole drama of whether or not to shut down the government, you will remember was not started by trump but by right wing billionaire elon musk who posted online over 150 times about the funding bill to keep the government running, stating lots of things about it that deafly were not true insisting in increasing lee vociferous terms that republicans needed to tank the bill and not fund the government and shut everything down, it was only after musk got the ball rolling that trump eventually joined in. once trump got involved, he did start making demands from republican-controlled congress telling them what he wanted

from them as he was pushing them towards shutdown. what did he want them to give him? he wanted a specific thing that he asked for explicitly, he wanted the republican- controlled congress to abolish the debt ceiling. don't worry, you don't have to bother reminding yourself what the debt ceiling is because they did not do it. trump wanted it, he demanded it but they he did not get it. they did not make any change on the debt ceiling although that is what trump was demanding. which makes him look, again, error-prone, easily confused and week. particularly makes him look weak compared to elon musk. what did result from the standoff that nearly shut down the government this weekend and what did changed is not what would have benefited trump and not what trump asked for, is not the debt ceiling, instead it benefited elon musk. what they did remove from the government funding bill is a provision that screened and regulated u.s. investments in china. those new rules could have

interfered with mosques reported plans to build yet another massive manufacturing plant in china, right down the street from the largest tesla factory on the earth which he has built in shanghai, because usa, usa, usa. as david dan put it on the american prospect this weekend, this is the first scandal of the second trump term, and take a long look, because it's going to look like all the other scandals. this is going to be a constant theme for the next four years. personal business interest are going to constantly take precedence over governance in the trump/musk white house. the word for this is oligarchy. oligarchs do not think about the country first. luckily, they have taken integrity off of the coat of arms, just sandblasted it right off of there so we do not have to do it ourselves.

we are starting the holidays in the midst of a presidential transition that really has been a shambolic mess and it should be covered as such. on top of all of those mistakes, we are now seeing the first signs that the errors and the goals and self-inflicted italy administration of this presidency may reflect a new president who is not just incompetent, who is not just bad at the basics of what it takes to appoint people to jobs and run a transition, we may be seeing the first signs of a new president who is weak enough not just to fail, but to be taken advantage of by some of the brighter bulbs on the tree. more ahead, stay with us it t because there are places you'd like to be. (♪♪) serious side effects include increased ketones in blood or urine and bacterial infection between the anus and genitals,

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>> before president biden was inaugurated in january 2021, the previous president spent the last months of his presidency rushing to kill as many american prisoners as possible. he tried to rush through as many executions as he could at the very end, including three people whom he had killed just days before the newly elected president biden took over. it was really an extraordinary rush to the death chamber. i mean extraordinary in mathematical terms. from the time the death penalty was reestablished in 1988, the federal death penalty was

reestablished in 1988 through june 2020, there had only been three federal executions total. three and 32 years. then, just during trump's last six months in office there were 13. three and 32 years and then 13 and six months. today, president biden made sure his successor, of course the same guy who preceded him, can't continue on anything like that pays. today president biden commuted that senses are nearly every federal prisoner and death row in the united states him it does not mean they will be set free, but it does mean they will not be killed by the government. 37 of the 40 federal death row prisoners will instead serve life without parole. the only exceptions were three prisoners convicted for acts of terrorism or for hate crimes, those were the boston marathon palmer, and the mother emanuel

ame church shooter entry of life synagogue shooter. those three are the only ones left on death row today after these 37 commutations today, just ahead of christmas from president biden. among the people who have been pushing president biden to take this step is brian stevenson. ryan stevenson has been the leading anti-death penalty advocate in this country for decades. in 1989 he founded the equal justice initiative in alabama, it challenges excessive punishment broadly and that senses in particular across the country. he wrote best selling memoir, just mercy. it tells the story of a man who spent six years on death row who was not just spared execution, he was set free one brian stevenson was able to prove without a shadow of a doubt that the man was innocent, that he had been wrongly convicted. he freed him before the state had a chance to kill him.

just mercy became the basis of an award-winning film with the same name and of course it starts the great michael b jordan. after president biden commuted those 37 that senses today brian stevenson said this, he said quote, we do not need to kill people to show that killing is wrong with this country. the death penalty is a torturous, flawed, expensive and error filled practice that must be abolished. i commend president biden for this historic act and hope that governors and state executives follow the presidents lead. joining us now is brian stevenson, founder and executive director of the equal justice initiative. it is real honor to have you here. thank you for taking the time. >> thank you for having me. >> let me start by asking you took slain why you think this action by president biden was important today. >> it is historic in the sense that no u.s. president has ever commuted this many death sentences and certainly in the

modern era it has no precedent. it is also significant because it can be a turning point in how we think about the death penalty. support for the death penalty is at a five decade low. we have seen a real move away from capital punishment in many states that have abolished it including southern states like virginia, that sentencing rates are lower than they have been in decades. the execution rates are low, the recent poll for the first time established that a majority of americans between 18 and 43 no longer believe in the death penalty. i think the commutations could be a turning point if other executives, other governments and other leaders follow his lead. there are 700 people on death row in california that could be commuted and governor newsom has talked about that. there are people on death row in north carolina, pennsylvania, ohio and many other states. i think we have an opportunity

to really step back on this punishment that has been so flawed, error-prone and troubling over the last 50 years. >> you have made a powerful case that part of what is wrong with the death penalty is what it asks of us as a society, what it asks of our government that people who do terrible things are more than the worst thing they have ever done in their lives. those of us who think of ourselves as citizens and people who are responsible to the way our government behaves also have a responsibility to make sure that one of the things our government ought not to do is make it somebody's a job to kill people as part of what they do to earn a paycheck. given that, what do you make of the three exceptions that the president made. the three crimes that are associated with

those three prisoners are obviously some of the most heinous and notorious crimes committed in this country in my lifetime. but, still, it is notable by making 37 commutations that he pulled out those three as exceptions. >> you could characterize those three cases as cases of terrorism, cases of mass murder. what is significant about those three cases as they are relatively early in the process. they will be able to litigate the issues in their case for several years. i think there will be another opportunity to address those cases before any of those people are subjected to an execution. you are right, i don't think we should think about the death penalty by asking if people deserve to die for the crimes they committed, we should be asking, do we deserve to kill? we have a system that makes so many mistakes. this year we saw the 200th person exonerated and released after being convicted and

sentenced to death. it is a shocking rate of error for every eight people we have executed in the united states over the last 50 years we have identified one missing person on death row. we would never tolerate that rate of error in public administration. if someone told you there was a tocsin on some apples and one out of eight apples if you touch one it would kill you, we would stop selling apples, we would not tolerate this in public health, we continue to tolerate it in the administration of the death penalty. i do think there is something cruel about forcing people to participate in something so clearly problematic, so clearly torturous. we do not expect our officials topeople who are convicted of . we do not think government officials to torture people who have been convicted of torture . somehow we have told ourselves asking state employees to kill people who have killed is okay.

one letter submitted to the president and supported these commutations came from correctional officials, wardens, correctional officers who bear the trauma and the weight of having to subject people, unnecessarily, gratuitously, to the systematic and lethal killings. i think that is what is going to push many of us to keep fighting for those three, not just those three on the federal death row, but the over 2000 that are on state death throes across the country. >> ryan -- bryan stevenson, the author of just mercy and are nations leading moral and legal voice. on this incredibly important issue. thank you for coming on tonight. it is nice to see you and have you here. >> great to see you too. >> more news ahead. news ahead.

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7 last week we talked about a government rule that requires a car company to report whenever a car gets in a crash while in self driving mode. crashes like this one on thanksgiving day 2022 when a tesla in san francisco that was in full self driving mode inexplicably stopped on the highway and caused a a car pileup. thanks to this rule you have to report it when a self driving car crashes, tesla had to report that crash to the government.

now that the ceo of tesla is kind of a co-president elect, though, reuters is reporting this, trump team wants to scrap car crash reporting rule that tesla opposes. for the low, low price of financing one presidential election, tesla may have bodice of a u.s. government, that among other things, no longer requires tesla to report when self driving software causes rex , hurts and kills people. arguably tesla is more a chinese car company then an american car company. the biggest tesla factory, the factory that makes more cars than any other plant, the single factory that makes roughly half the cars it makes globally is a huge one in shanghai. tesla right now is try to get approval from the chinese government to operate its self driving car technology in that

country as well. tesla ceo, elon musk really wants to keep the chinese government happy, and he really wants to build yet more factories in china. he is really invested in having chinese workers manufacturing his cars. right down the street from his huge shanghai tesla factory that he has up and running, musk is building another $200 million tesla battery factory, again, to employ chinese workers . while donald trump appears to have not gotten what he wanted out of the near government shutdown this weekend, elon musk does appear to have successfully maneuvered republicans in congress to cutting out of the government funding bill a provision that would have thrown regulatory roadblocks in the way of his continued massive investment in chinese manufacturing for his car company. we reached out for comment and we have not heard back, we will let you know if we do. the idea that we may have gone through this near-death

experience with another trump government shutdown potentially happening right before christmas even before trump technically gets back into office and we did it specifically so his billionaire pseudo-copresident could protect his relationship with the chinese government and get more of what he wants in terms of chinese manufacturing, it is unsettling enough from a national security perspective, from a national sovereignty perspective, but it is all the more unsettling given reporting in recent days about the ways in which our own government has found elon musk to be a potential national security risk. the "wall street journal", for example, reported that while there are several hundred employees at spacex, musk's company, who have security clearances on sensitive information, elon musk is not one of the people who has that level of clearance. that is not normal for companies with this type of sensitive work for the government.

ceos of other similar companies have been able to get the security clearance, but not elon musk. if you're wondering why, consider this reporting from the "new york times", quote, elon musk and his rocket company, spacex, have repeatedly failed to comply with federal reporting protocols aimed at protecting state secrets, including by not providing some details of his meetings with foreign leaders. according to people with knowledge of the company and internal documents. concerns about the reporting practices-and particularly about musk himself, have triggered at least three federal reviews. the defense department's office of inspector general opened a review in the matter this year, the air force and also the pentagon's office of undersecretary of defense issued separate reviews last month as in november. the air force also recently denied musk high-level security access, citing potential security risks.

in the past three years nine different countries including in europe and the middle east, nine different countries, have raised security questions about musk in meetings with u.s. defense officers. it seems clear from the reporting that some of the security concerns might have to do with reports of elon musk's drug use, but there is also these continuing concerns that he has not disclosed all of his meetings with foreign leaders, or what was talked about in those meetings and that is required if you want to maintain a security clearance with the u.s. government. the question for all of us, why would a person refused to disclose what is happening at meetings with foreign leaders and foreign governments? what are you talking about with foreign leaders that you do not want the u.s. government to know about? what does it mean to have someone with that kind of security risk essentially single-handedly directing the actions of the u.s. government

during a presidential transition? joining us now is "new york times" investigative reporter eric lipton. thank you for joining us. >> thank you for having me pay it >> help me understand the, how surprising it is, how unexpected it might be in the abstract for someone who is the head of a company like spacex, for example, do not have the kind of security clearance that mr. musk has either not been able to obtain, or has actively been denied. >> there is something called the special access program that is a higher level of classification that spacex wanted for elon musk that would allow him to participate in some of the most sensitive discussions around, for example , right now spacex is helping the national reconnaissance office build a spy satellite network around the globe in orbit.

he is also in charge of national security launches, putting some of the most sensitive spy satellites and missile tracking equipment into orbit, the special access program would have given him the ability to participate in some of the most classified discussions around these programs. that was denied by the air force that he has top-secret clearance, but not special access program. that is unusual for a ceo. it is something that does not really happen for a ceo at that level you have questions about special access program ability for someone at that level. the fact of the matter is, spacex is incredibly involved in the national security and spy system. it is not only a large company, it is helping build a spy satellite network, and also helping create satellites that are used for missile tracking, missile defense programs. it is an incredibly important company and national security for the united states. >> a company and national

security who ceo cannot get security clearance to be allowed access to some of what his own company is doing. it seems strange. can i ask about other countries having reported security concerns about mr. musk to u.s. defense officials. do we know anything about the nature of those concerns that they reported? >> the most specific thing was from a colleague that worked on a story with us and it had to do with israel had concerns about whether or not musk could be trusted to maintain state secrets and not communicating with potential adversaries, sharing information that perhaps he had access to. that was one of a number of countries that shared with us, that raised a concern about musk and whether or not, basically could he be trusted.

it is very unusual to have a ceo of a major defense contractor be so engaged in foreign business operations directly, as you discussed with respect to china and the extent of his operations in china and the business interest that china and the leverage, to some extent that china has over him and his company is unusual. i think that makes folks at the air force uncomfortable. >> "new york times" investigative reporter eric lipton, thank you very much. i know this is a particularly technical area of reporting, it is hard to report on security clearance and intelligence concerns because of how secret it is, so it is illuminating to have you and your colleagues working on this. you so much for helping us understand it. >> thank you. >> we will be right back. right a specialized urologist. because it could be peyronie's disease, or pd. it's a medical condition where there is a curve in the erection, caused by a formation of scar tissue.

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>> there was a lady who lived in a shoe, when a pan caught fire she knew what to do, don't pour water on it when it's hot hot hot. turn off the heat and try to smother. still, to guard against fire used a controlled deep fat fryer. the old lady knew what to do, do you? >> do you? i might be that lady. public service announcements

are among my favorite things ever and all of broadcasting. i said at the outset that i have one more christmas present for you this hour, this is it. we have started our own version of a public service announcement. with the incoming administration not doing normal bedding or background checks for nominees, we are starting a new series we're calling public servants announcements, to fill in the gaps on who is set to get big important government jobs. we just started posting them on youtube if you go to maddowblog.com you can find them. we are going to drop our newest public servant announcement which is about trump's pick of dr. mehmet oz to run medicare. on christmas afternoon somewhere between tearing down the stockings and carving up the turkey check out our new public servant announcement series. watch out, i am feeling

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i forgot to wash my work shirt. just wear it again! i added the unstopables now with odor blocker and it keeps our clothes fresh all day! [sniff] ooo imma be feelin it at work today. she smells so good i'm actually paying attention! smell unstopable.

one is admittedly a matter of mild personal embarrassment, but two -- two means that this is a problem for me, one for which i have no defense. merry christmas. that is going to do that for me for now. for now. - okay, boomer. (upbeat music) - i am a very proud baby boomer. >> i am told i am a baby boomer. >> okay, boomer. >> i am a